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1 1 (August 3, 2004)

handle is hein.crs/crsahbz0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Order Code RS20139 Updated August 3, 2004 CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web China and the World Trade Organization Wayne M. Morrison Specialist in International Trade and Finance Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division Summary After many years of difficult negotiations, China, on December 11, 2001, become a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the international agency that administers multilateral trade rules. Under the terms of its WTO membership, China agreed to significantly liberalize its trade and investment regimes. A main concern for Congress is to ensure that China fully complies with its WTO commitments. According to U.S. government officials and many business representatives, China's WTO compliance record has been mixed.. This report will be updated as events warrant. After 15 years of bilateral and multilateral negotiations, China formally entered the WTO on December 11, 2001. The negotiations on China's accession to the WTO focused on many Chinese practices that distort flows of trade to and from China, such as high tariffs and non-tariff barriers, restrictions on foreign investment, lack of national treatment for foreign firms, inadequate protection of intellectual property rights (IPR), and trade-distorting government subsidies. Membership in the WTO requires China to change many laws, institutions, and policies to bring them into conformity with WTO rules.' The Role and Interest of the United States China has been one of the world's fastest growing economies over the past several years (real GDP growth averaged 9.3% annually from 1979 to 2003), and many trade analysts argue that China could become a potentially large market for a wide variety of U.S. goods and services. A World Bank report estimates that China's share of world trade could triple from 3.0% in 1992 to 9.8% by the year 2020, making China the world's second-largest trading nation after the United States.2 The growing importance of China in the world economy was an important factor in the heightened interest among WTO members in bringing China into the WTO and thereby subjecting its trade regime to multilateral trade rules. 1 See also CRS Issue Brief 1B91121, China-U.S. Trade Issues, by Wayne M. Morrison. 2 The World Bank, China 2020: China Engaged, 1997, p. 31. Congressional Research Service + The Library of Congress

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